White Horse Inn: First steps

Welcome to the first instalment of our pub blog. Over the coming weeks, we will be detailing the ins and outs of buying (or attempting to buy, as it seemed sometimes!) and setting up business in The White Horse Inn, our local pub.

This will be our first foray into the world of being publicans, so there are bound to be many ups and downs to come. We would encourage our readers to give us feedback and pointers along the way, as we know we're going to need them!

MRTC, a locally owned business supplying communications equipment to the motor racing industry, had been interested in buying the freehold for The White Horse Inn pub a few years ago. Rumours in our village, Seagrave in Leicestershire, abounded about the pub being up for sale again (you know what the local grapevine is like!) so we started our research in earnest.

Now, you might say we are mad even considering investing in a trade that is struggling in these difficult times, and you'd probably be right! Luckily, the village has a very strong community aspect and local events are always well supported by the villagers. Knowing that we would have this initial support behind us, we decided to press on, despite the fact we knew quite a bit of refurbishment work was going to be needed.

Research revealed the pub had been bought by Brandstar, a property investment company, back in 2005, having been put up for sale by the then current owners, believed to be Pubfolio. A new, local tenant was installed by Brandstar and away they went.

Fast-forward 3 years and it appears Brandstar have decided, along with several other properties they own, to sell the pub. We're not sure of the particular reasons for this decision, however we do know that the current tenants were struggling to hold on to customers and maintain a successful business.

We tracked the people selling the pub down to an estate agent called AKW and made initial contact to express our interest and arrange a first viewing.

The pub itself used to be owned by Marstons, and still retains some of the fixtures and other features you would expect. These include the hand pumps behind the bar and gold lettering announcing that the pub is called the "White Horse Inn".

As we are both locals in the village (G has lived there since she was born and B moved from London to live there in October 2007), we knew the current tenants and so were able to go for a nose around without raising too much suspicion.

As you can expect, further rumours circulated, with various people from the village and surrounding area being congratulated on their purchase of the pub when they had not even mentioned being interested! Being a local business, MRTC was of course on the rumoured owner list, but that was before we had even had a proper look round.

The first viewing was a major eye opener, as whilst the bar and lounge area were in reasonable shape and could just do with a lick of paint and some TLC, the residential area upstairs was going to need a lot of work. There also appeared to be some problems with the roof (which seemed easily fixable) and the cellar…well, the less said about that, the better (think really, really bad and then quadruple it).

The bar itself had a reasonable range on offer (3 hand pumps, standard and premium lager, cider, stout etc.), however it hadn't been very well looked after and so would certainly need stripping back. The pub has been featured by the local CAMRA group for several years and is even featured on the front page of their website.

So, we are still interested and will be putting in a serious offer for the premises. Watch this space for a new entry to the blog very soon…